Moody Blues 'Live at the BBC' re-issue is out today

Moody Blues drummer Graeme Edge talked about The Moody Blues and other artists doing the BBC sessions:“The musicians union had limitations on the needle time so that you had to have a bunch of live acts – live recording. You know, you weren’t in the studio all the time. And that is a boon for groups because instead of having a crooner and BBC Philharmonic they only had to pay for four guys. And so for a period of about two years we were there sort of every month recording something or other, yeah.”

The set includes 41 live-in-the-studio performances from the late '60s.

Graeme Edge talked about recording “Nights in White Satin” at the BBC:“The first time we ever recorded ‘Nights in White Satin’ and heard it for the first time in the control room and sort of all looked at each other – and this is not romance, this is true, especially of me – ‘This is gonna be big.’ And I thought I was wrong for a while cause if you remember ‘Nights’ came out [and] went to about 28 in the charts and disappeared. So, I thought, ‘Well, there’s me as a hit picker.’ But it came back fortunately.”

Live at the BBC also includes versions of “Ride My See-Saw,” “Voices in the Sky,” “Lovely to See You,” “Tuesday Afternoon" and “Question.”

Graeme Edge discussed how The Moody Blues benefitted from doing BBC sessions: “I think it helped in terms of establishing us because some bands couldn’t hack it with the live recording. So it did us good in terms of keeping us in the public eye. We got a reputation of being somewhat musical.”

Graeme Edge recently told us he is pretty much retired and that Justin Hayward and John Lodge don't want to keep Moody Blues going without him. Instead, they have solo bands, both of which are touring the U.S. this summer.